Swery’s The Missing Trailer Makes it Marginally Less Vague

Game development weirdo Swery has several new games on the way, one of them being The Missing, which is being developed in-house at his White Owls company and published by Arc System Works. The details have trickled out very slowly, first with a title and video announcement, then with a handful of screenshots. Now, The Missing has a new trailer, which provides some context on those screenshots and not a whole lot else to go on.

At this point, we know The Missing is some sort of platforming game, as evidenced by the screens and now the trailer. The main character is a young woman, and most of the trailer shows her dying in various cartoonishly gruesome ways. It’s almost like a surreal, Japanese Dragon’s Lair in that there are myriad unique death animations based on the hazard the player runs into. It’s funny and kind of horrifying at the same time. The deaths do seem to be gameplay-adjacent, as evidenced by Arc System Work’s elevator pitch, which came in as part of a press release:

Guide JJ on their search to find Alex, who has seemingly gone missing while on a visit to a secluded island. Defy death by reincarnating yourself, or utilize your misery to help solve the puzzles surrounding you.

Yeah, I can’t wait to solve puzzles by utilizing my misery when The Missing arrives sometime in 2018 for the PlayStation 4, the Nintendo Switch, the Xbox One, and the PC.